You probably remember the online outrage over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) copyright enforcement proposal. Last week, the Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force released a report on digital copyright policy that endorsed one piece of the controversial proposal: making the streaming of copyrighted works a felony.

I don't think it is possible for a Government of the size of the USA to be rotten to the core. It is simply impossible. The recent Snowden leaks are proof of this. There is always someone with enough backbone to actually do this. The economical affect could be profound (10% of cloud computing customers have moved their business from the USA already due to the leaks).

The reality is and this would be apparent to anyone that has ever watched the wire or worked in a large organisation.

There are so many conflicting interests in large organisations by higher up individuals, that an overall big brother is impossible (it was even impossible in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia).

Everyone envisages a one man with a vision of everything ... it simply isn't possible for one (very) busy man to keep and make a decision about everything and he delegates decisions to those below him.